Iowa's Winter Blast Could Make An Unrepresentative Way Of Picking Presidential Nominees Even More So

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Most Iowans won’t be out Monday night. Never mind that it’s forecast to be well below zero, with wind chills as low as minus 40 degrees, and the roads may still be icy from a set of snowstorms that hammered the state this past week.

It’s because they’re not registered with the Republican Party, which is kicking off the presidential nominating season with its famous caucuses. Or because they don’t want to make the commitment to attend, which involves getting to the nearest of 1,500 caucus sites and sitting in a room — potentially for hours — for the chance to vote on the party’s presidential nominee.

But the winter weather, intimidating even for Iowa, will make an already unrepresentative process even less representative. Elderly Iowans, the backbone of the caucus, are wondering how they will make it to their sites Monday. Political types are mentally downgrading their expected turnout and wondering who a smaller, harder-core electorate will favor.

All this gives longtime critics of the caucus even more reason to be critical.

“This is no way to begin the election of a president,” said Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and federal housing secretary who was a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, when he called for Iowa to have a less prominent role. “You have to be a die-hard who’s willing to trudge through snow and be there for several hours. And if you miss it, your opportunity to vote is gone.”

Democrats already have downgraded Iowa after the state party bungled the vote-counting in the 2020 caucuses. Democrats have relegated the state to later in their nominating process after President Joe Biden declared that he wanted more diverse states that better represent his party and the